Читать книгу The Gun Alley Tragedy: Record of the Trial of Colin Campbell Ross онлайн

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While the trial was on, and for weeks before it was on, anything in the nature of a dispassionate review was impossible. Public opinion was inflamed as it has not been inflamed within the memory of this generation. Ross was tried for his life in an atmosphere charged and overcharged with suspicion. Whether guilty or innocent, he entered the dock in circumstances under which few men are compelled to enter it. As everyone in Australia knows, he was condemned almost entirely on the strength of two confessions he was alleged to have made. It would probably be admitted that, in the absence of those alleged confessions—which he strenuously denied ever having made—no jury could have convicted him. It is doubtful, indeed, if without them there was a case for the jury. But did he actually say what either the woman Ivy Matthews or the man Harding declared he said? The verdict of the jury does not supply an answer. The question remains unanswered, and the doubt in regard to it constitutes the enduring mystery of the Ross trial.